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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Dragon??? So after nearly 10months what do we think? NATIVE 2000ASA no 18stops no ..

jake blackstone said:
I don't believe Sony ever claimed F65 to be an 8K camera. It would be disingenuous to do so, as it is not even technically possible to create 8k image out of 8k bayered sensor.
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First of all it is NOT an 8K Bayer sensor. Period. It's not even full 6K. So you answered the question incorrectly. I'm sorry if I come across as a dick here, but these are the facts.

And yes, they do market it as an 8K camera. I have brochures and pamphlets to prove that. Or just look at the F65 product page: http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/show-h...bsccms-assets-show-highend-F65.shtml#/f65t1_1

EDIT> It seems now they have updated this to address their pixel counting method. It's very vague, but they talk of pixel counts and zig-zag. And no, the sensor is not 20MP. That number is derived after their zig-zag counting.

They talk about densities, but don't come clean about anything. They use a bunch of obfuscated mumbo-jumbo and graphics that don't represent anything to try and communicate something that just isn't.

The unfortunate truth is that Sony's marketing is full of shit. Always has been, probably always will be. Their gaming division is the worst and has been since the inception of the PlayStation. It seems the same ethics, or lack thereof, have migrated over to their CE and Pro Cinema divisions over the past 6~8 years.

My point is what is what's good for the goose is good for the gander- Red can't claim true 6K images out of Dragon as well. Let's not accuse Sony of " deliberate marketing strategy to obfuscate the truth about how their sensor functions" while dismissing the same of Red. I'm sorry to see Sergio's post degenerate into Sony vs Red marketing.
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RED does an OK job here. They advertise it as a 6K camera because it is indeed a 6K image sensor. They are up front about Bayer CFA resolution and efficiencies and that nominal measurements will be lower. They are more up front about this than any other camera maker I know. Arri doesn't spell this out. Neither does Sony, nor Canon. This is no different than any DSLR manufacturer, Canon, Nikon, Sony or any other talking MegaPixel numbers. Those are all Bayer CFA at the moment with much lower measured resolutions too. I'll put up a Dragon against an F65 any day when it comes to shooting resolution charts or attempting to measure resolution or detail in an image.

Anyway, I've said my piece about the F65, I'm done.
 
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Jeff Kilgroe said:
RED does an OK job here. They advertise it as a 6K camera because it is indeed a 6K image sensor. They are up front about Bayer CFA resolution and efficiencies and that nominal measurements will be lower. They are more up front about this than any other camera maker I know. Arri doesn't spell this out. Neither does Sony, nor Canon. This is no different than any DSLR manufacturer, Canon, Nikon, Sony or any other talking MegaPixel numbers. Those are all Bayer CFA at the moment with much lower measured resolutions too. I'll put up a Dragon against an F65 any day when it comes to shooting resolution charts or attempting to measure resolution or detail in an image.

Anyway, I've said my piece about the F65, I'm done.
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As I already said, this thread is NOT about Sony vs Red. I repeat, Sony never claimed F65 to be an 8K camera. On the other hand Red does claim Dragon is able to produce 6k images the same way the original Red One was marketed as a 4k camera. And that is just not true. I can just imagine what would happen, if ARRI started claiming, that Alexa is a 3K camera…
Let's just agree, that right now there is no 6k camera other than film:)
 
To me there is a big difference between a 6K image and 6K of resolution. I'm happy to say that Dragon creates 6K imagery (images),
but would not say it resolves 6K.
 
jake blackstone said:
As I already said, this thread is NOT about Sony vs Red. I repeat, Sony never claimed F65 to be an 8K camera. On the other hand Red does claim Dragon is able to produce 6k images the same way the original Red One was marketed as a 4k camera. And that is just not true. I can just imagine what would happen, if ARRI started claiming, that Alexa is a 3K camera…
Let's just agree, that right now there is no 6k camera other than film:)
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http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?117362-Dragon-vs-Canon-1Dx-Color-Matching
film? What film you talking about.I read on somewhere film resolves 30K detail :)
 
I think it sad that we spend so much time on this forum fighting and not problem solving and helping each other get the best images out of the camera.

That is what I think the spirit of this forum is all about. We are all redusers right? Let's stop making threads that are designed soly for argument sake.
 
jacob.schwarz said:
I think it sad that we spend so much time on this forum fighting and not problem solving and helping each other get the best images out of the camera.

That is what I think the spirit of this forum is all about. We are all redusers right? Let's stop making threads that are designed soly for argument sake.
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I think Phil Holland has probably done the best job of this. Whether one agrees with his conclusions or not I think he does a very good job of illustrating what his tests are revealing to him. To have a serious discussion about these types of issues requires the rest of us to have the data and supporting material to back it up. Others come to mind as well but Phil has been relentless in his testing.
 
I guess if you use an 8 inch by 10 inch film view camera you could get a pretty good high res image, beyond 8K even, but
then what lens and its MTF is the limiter. Stat camera anyone?

:)
 
Steve Sherrick said:
I think Phil Holland has probably done the best job of this. Whether one agrees with his conclusions or not I think he does a very good job of illustrating what his tests are revealing to him. To have a serious discussion about these types of issues requires the rest of us to have the data and supporting material to back it up. Others come to mind as well but Phil has been relentless in his testing.
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Agreed. Phil rocking in. I think if we all spend more helping red and each other make better images and addressing issues and sharing solutions with the tools that are available NOW then complaining progress will move faster and we'll all be happier shooters. Envy and coveting things we have no control over is just of waste of time, unless you troll this forum for entertainment. I'll personally try to post more useful post with knowledge and solutions in the future.
 
jake blackstone said:
I don't believe Sony ever claimed F65 to be an 8K camera

And I answered- Sony F65.
Let's move on...
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Sony's own marketing and website state it is an 8K camera. It's actually more about 5.7K.

It produces good images minus the weird marketing and some pixel related things.
 
Every time anyone questions quality of Dragon images, the resolution argument rears it's ugly head.
Nowhere Sergio questioned Dragon's resolution. it was brought up by Phil.
I'd like for this discussion to be brought back to the original question- is Dragon a truly revolutionary camera with the new sensor, that was originally envisioned a few years ago? Or is it more of a marketing ploy to entice an upgrade?
 
The OP was looking for feedback on the issue of clean 2000ISO and 18 stops of DR which is what some folks expected from Dragon over a year ago.

1) With the Dragon OLPF V2 most people wouldn't call 2000ISO clean. That said, if you use noise reduction in post at levels similar to what is done on board by most other cameras set to 2,000ISO (or +6db gain perhaps) you might be surprised. The "Red way" is to record as much real sensor data as possible and leave "development" for post. That is not an ideal strategy for all production scenarios, but it does provide the most "meat" for grading/post treatments.

2) I tend to be conservative so I'd call Epic Dragon a 14-15 "usable" stop camera (at 400ISO without DEB), for reference I'd say Alexa is 13-14 usable stop system with more inherent highlight compression. FWIW the only spec I respect on digital is signal to noise ratio, which, sadly, requires a subjective assessment of when the noise level is too great.

Cheers - #19
 
jake blackstone said:
Every time anyone questions quality of Dragon images, the resolution argument rears it's ugly head.
Nowhere Sergio questioned Dragon's resolution. it was brought up by Phil.
I'd like for this discussion to be brought back to the original question- is Dragon a truly revolutionary camera with the new sensor, that was originally envisioned a few years ago? Or is it more of a marketing ploy to entice an upgrade?
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I think it was really revolutionary with the old olpf... When I first got it I was so amazed about the range and lowlight of the camera... did just have to shoot a quick test out on the street to realize it was far better than any camera I shot with for low light.

see test: https://vimeo.com/87804971


But yes then there was the olpf flare...

I thought it would not bother me but already on the first real project we had some huge issue with some christmas lights hanging over a table in the dark when shooting with moving camera, client did not like the look of it to say the least, as the whole image was covered by big red dots, now way around it. So yes, then it was quite clear to me that I wanted a olpf swap... When I got it I took the camera straight out of the box and run ut on the street and shot this little test in pure daylight / naked sun, I was then quite stunned by the highlight coverage, it was insanely good, better than I ever seen before.

https://vimeo.com/97428198

The shadow side of the building wall has full coverage, still the sun does not burn out when the camera is aimed straight for the sun... to me thats more than enough highlight protection...

Then I was thrilled... until the evening came and I realize that the camera kind of lost in the low end what it now had in the highlights....

So if red just get the olpf right I think it will be even more revolutionising than it allready is... Epic is/was revolutionising, small form factor, high pixel count, large sensor... Dragon is all that again and color renditions are just so much better. If they get the DR right then it's even more of a revolution.

To me it's not just a small upgrade it corrects the weak parts in the MX and add sensor size, color performance and all ready far better DR. But I think the DR part will be even better.

I think RED should skip the Olpf thing, leave it out and make a OLPF/motion mount combo.
 
Hey Jake, have you have done any colour correction/grading with Dragon footage yet? If so, I'd be interested in hearing what conclusions have you deduced? What about compared to MX, F65, Alexa, etc. etc.?

Not that I don't believe other owner/ops, but so far there have been a lot of contradictions compared to my own Dragon testing/results. Plus a colourists' perspective -- seeing 'picture finished' results -- holds quite a bit of weight when talking about image quality.
 
jake blackstone said:
snip:
I'd like for this discussion to be brought back to the original question- is Dragon a truly revolutionary camera with the new sensor, that was originally envisioned a few years ago? Or is it more of a marketing ploy to entice an upgrade?
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Mike P. said:
snip:

For me, the debate isn't so much about how much better Dragon is than MX/Alexa/F55/etc, it's more about how much value it has for $9500 (which could literally purchase an entirely shootable Scarlet package or F5 package, or three A7s packages with 4k recorder, etc. for b-cam.) I'm inclined to believe I could make more money and/or save more time on set, having two Scarlet-X Packages, than one Scarlet-Dragon package, particularly when Dragon isn't blowing the doors off of Alexa in terms of performance (which at least would have given the camera clout come negotiation time.)
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I hesitate to chime in here because even though I'm an early adopter (R1 SN206, Epic SN234) and we have upgraded our camera to Dragon, these things always seem to get taken the wrong way.

With that said, I think Mike P. brings up an interesting point - which is the value of the Dragon Upgrade. As announced, Dragon was going to give us dramatic increases in dynamic range and useable ISO. (and saying that the original OLPF showed that the SENSOR was capable of it doesn't really add up if the CAMERA that one ends up using doesn't - we shoot with a CAMERA not a SENSOR). And IIRC it was going to cost $6K.

Part of the reason we made this upgrade was that although the Epic-X rental market is overly saturated, we felt that Dragon would provide a significant short term bump in rentals because everyone would want it over the Epic-X but with the issues that have come up it doesn't seem to be the case. I'm not saying that no one is doing well with dragon, just that in the early days of Redone and Epic even us independents got some significant overflow from the bigger players and that doesn't seem to be the case with Dragon.

And no we didn't base our business plan on rentals, we wanted the Dragon improvements for our own work (at least as it was originally touted) and the idea of early adoption paying off just made a financial decision easier. I guess what I'm driving at is that I don't THINK Dragon is not fairly priced as I don't have the facts of material, labor, and development costs, but it seems that the FEELING from what people have been expressing here is that it may have been oversold and under delivered - at least up until now, and it FEELS a little worse when you raise the price and reduce the expectations.

There was a great line from MADMEN that went something like "we don't pay you to manage accounts, we pay you to manage EXPECTATIONS".

I'm no one to talk really, since I have my own issues, but It seems like maybe as RED matures they will work on managing expectations better.

If this were my product, I would seriously consider reducing the price, and/or offer a $2500 store credit to the early DRAGON adopters . This is what RED did with the original redone when they decided to forgo the onboard monitor (and storage?) so they gave a $2500 accessories credit to the early adopters.

Just a thought.
 
I wish a had a crystal ball so I could see if the "DRAGON 2" sensor will be announced at NAB 2015. It has taken so very very
long for me to finally get my Epic-X upgraded to Dragon, but is "DRAGON 2" not far way.... in Red's lab as I type.

:)
 
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